Faster than Light: Strange Happenings
by Tyler Rigas
Summary: One captain and his crew are hired by a mysterious man who wants them to complete odd-jobs for dubious causes. But one time, an odd-job finds them.
1. Recruitment: Gary

Gary Herner was raised in a small town on some backwater planet that didn't even make it on to most star maps. Mustafis was a small ocean planet, most of its inhabitants living in either large underwater cities or the poorer ones living on small islands near the equator of the planet. Gary fell into the latter category. His parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on were all just humble shrimp farmers, perfectly content on surviving on the meager pay that they received from large corporations that profited from the small farmers. This, however, was not good enough for Gary.

Gary had aspirations and dreams that extended far out from being shrimp herders like all of his ancestors before him. He would count the days until the Federation would send out recruiters to even small planets like his to find starship captains and crew members in order to "fight the good fight" against the rebels. Gary knew that the rebel situation was completely blown out of proportion, however. There were even rumors and conspiracy theories that said that the Federation created the rebellion themselves to secure power and funding from all of the major governments across the universe.

After Gary took his aptitude test, he anxiously sent it on its way on the nearest sensor satellite station. Days past, and days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months as Gary awaited the dreaded communication that would determine whether he could travel across the cosmos, delivering supplies to Federation bases, destroying the occasional rebel ship, and exploring unknown worlds or if he was condemned to being a shrimp farmer on some obscure planet that nobody has heard of. The reply finally came to him after many months of waiting.

Gary rushed to the communications relay center when he was notified that he had a message directed towards him. The Federation had finally gotten back to him! This was finally his time to escape this planet and go out and explo-

"Application denied. Please try again when the next Federation Recruitment Officer visits *Mustafis*. Thank you for supporting the righteous and just side of the war! Do not forget to purchase war bonds in order to contribute your part to fight against the rebels! This is an automated message, please do not reply."

Gary stared in horror and disbelief. They had denied his application? How else would he escape this miserable planet? His hopes and dreams had come crashing down around him, all from a single message from a non-sentient automaton. Gary looked around the sensor station, seeing two or three people standing in line behind him. One man had a look of impatience on his surly face, waiting to use the terminal. With a flushed face, Gary logged out of his account and walked briskly towards the door, carefully avoiding eye contact.

As Gary walked outside of the small building, he was stopped by a shady-looking man with a dark suit. The material and color of the suit were strange, something definitely custom-made off-world. The other strange feature of the man was his eyes. His eyes seemed to subtly change colors, probably some kind of eye modification. Red to green to blue back to red, his eyes glowed like a lava lamp.

"Failed the exam, huh?" Gary snapped out of his inner monologue. He blanched. How would this stranger knew he had taken the exam, let alone failed it? "Wha- Who are you?", Gary replied, pushing his confusion out of mind. The man spoke no more and handed him a letter. Gary examined the letter. It was a plain white envelope, emblazoned with some symbol that he didn't recognize. The symbol looked like an upside-down trident, covered in little red spots.

Gary looked up and saw that he was standing alone. The man had completely vanished, all without the sound of footsteps and teleporter beam.

He shoved the envelope in his pocket and began his walk home. Something about the encounter unnerved him, giving him the feeling like he was being observed by some unseen entity. Gary quickened his pace from a walk to a jog, then to a sprint. He made it back to his home uneventfully. After making sure that the front door was locked, he slumped into a chair. Gary felt the envelope calling to him, beckoning him to open it. A wave of fatigue overcame him as he pulled the letter out of his pocket.

Gary looked at the odd envelope and began to open it... 


	2. Recruitment: Celeste

The girl's light green skin pulsated softly with a bioluminescent glow. Her dark cloak rippled softly in the wind as she quickly walked across the populated street. Skillfully avoiding eye contact with the pedestrians, she quickly arrived at her destination: A nondescript, wooden building with no apparent windows. She rasped on the smooth metal door in a specific pattern, quick and indiscernible to those who weren't paying attention. A small slot in the door quickly slid open, revealing a pair of harsh gray eyes. The moment that the eyes met with her own, the slot closed as quickly as it opened and the door clicked open.

Only after she was inside, the girl lifted her hood off of her head, revealing a sight that would have surprised many people if she weren't a regular. A girl, barely fourteen, stood in the doorway. Walking towards the bar counter, where a bartender cleaned glasses with a damp rag, she cleared her throat. Lifting his eyes from his task, the man spoke in a bored, monotone voice: "Gerald is already waiting for you in the back" and switching to a low voice: "Your majesty".

Princess Celeste Charkov III of Krishna Prime nodded and made her way towards the back of the bar. She stopped outside of the room labeled "#4", quickly opened the door, and slipped in. Closing the door behind her, she saw the man waiting for her. Her martial-arts instructor was operating off the grid, as he did for all of his clients, accepting non-traceable cash and not telling a soul. The good part about being royalty is that you had money to splurge on secrecy. Of course, the downside to being royal is that her parents definitely wouldn't approve of their little girl learning something as barbaric as martial arts. They thought of her as a fragile, little princess who couldn't fend for herself.

This, of course, couldn't be more from the truth. In reality, Celeste spent most of her free time as Emma Edwards, mercenary for hire. She was the go-to person for anything requiring stealth and burglary. Of course, no one knew that she was the Princess of the planet. Why would they?

The only people that knew that Celeste and Emma were one and the same was Gerald Hood, her martial-arts and parkour instructor, and the bartender of the Krishna Keep, an exclusive bar only known to a select few. The torch-lit room was dim, revealing a stout man dressed in traditional white robes and a couple of training dummies. "Miss Charkov," Gerald said with a bow.

The training was uneventful, except for one part at the end. As Celeste was leaving the Keep, she had the nagging feeling that she was being watched. It felt like a pair of eyeballs were staring her down nonstop. She shifted her hood to get a better look at her peripheral vision but saw no one in particular. Call it intuition, but Celeste had a bad feeling about being out in the open. She pulled her hood down and her cloak closer to her body, fully enveloping her, hiding her fluorescent skin. The cloak ruffled in the wind as she made her way back to the towering castle. Noticing the guards at the entrance, she continued walking around the side of the castle, coming towards an oddly-colored portion of the wall.

Celeste was no novice when it came to sneaking out and in of the castle. Her parents certainly wouldn't be happy finding out about her escapades. She had found this secret entrance long ago while exploring the castle. It had seemed that no one else knew about it, especially not her parents. She walked up to the false wall and pushed one of the bricks. The wall began to rumble as part of it slowly parted, revealing a small room with a pair of stairs leading upwards. She walked in, allowing the door to close behind her.

As she began up the stairway, she heard a gruff cough behind her. She quickly turned around with a frightened look, before quickly hiding it with an expression of fury. The man behind her wore a dark suit, the type of suit that was obviously made off-world. The suit's shade of night-sky was not unlike the color of her cloak. Celeste's hand tightened on her small dagger that she concealed under her cloak. The man appeared to be human, a rarity on Krishna Prime. The man's age looked to be no older than thirty, but his eyes told a different story. The sort of tired eyes that looked much older than thirty. This man was clearly dangerous. Celeste's knuckles whitened as she gripped the dagger.

Celeste whipped out the dagger, taking on the appropriate fighting stance, but, however, did not engage him. She knew that the man was extremely dangerous by his deceiving nature. His posture, she could tell, was trained to look elderly, but his stance gave him away. This man was a trained killer. The man let out a deep, dark chuckle seeing her stance. "W-who are you?" Celeste spoke, cutting off his laughter, refusing to show her terror. "A-and how did you find this place," she finishes, signaling to the walls behind her with her non-knife-holding hand.

The man shakes his head, laughter dying down. "I was present for this building's construction, Miss Charkov. I know a great deal more about its architecture than you do". Clearly a lie, Celeste thought. This building is more than one hundred years old. Celeste thinks back to his eyes and shivers. "That didn't answer my question," Celeste replies, shoving her fears aside.

"Who I am doesn't matter at this moment in time. What matters, your majesty, is that I have a proposition for you..." 


End file.
